This season, the veteran local actor has moved from playing a stroke victim with aphasia in Next Act's "The Secret Mask" to his current role as a forceful man with Alzheimer's in In Tandem's "The Outgoing Tide," heading toward this summer's gig as one of theater's signature old men, the title character of "King Lear."

Being older and playing older brings a certain freedom, Pickering acknowledged. He will turn 70 shortly after the run of "Outgoing Tide" ends in March.

"Sooner or later in your life you just go, 'Hey, this is it, here you go, this is what I got.' You're not so worried about what people think.

"Which means it's a lot less work. That is freeing."

It's unusual for one actor to play so many elders raging against the dying of the light at different theaters here. But you could say that Pickering has been training for this mortality slalom for years.

"When I was doing Scrooge (in 'A Christmas Carol'), I (was) practicing being old guys for a long time," Pickering said. "But I found year after year I'd have to put less makeup on my face."

Pickering's age is a distinctive positive in playing the role of Gunner, said "Outgoing Tide" director Chris Flieller.

"He has the age to have lived the life and doesn't have to act that," Flieller said. "You can't teach that. You can't ingest that over three weeks of rehearsal."

Pickering sees his life experience as a toolbox that he brings to his acting jobs.

Memorizing, of course, is an actor's major tool. Pickering considers himself lucky that people in his family haven't suffered from memory loss. As an actor, he notes, "I had to memorize stuff all through. I'm hoping this is an exercise to stave off dementia. …

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"I've been trying to exercise this guy all the time," he said, pointing to his brain.

While he forgets an occasional name today, Pickering doesn't sweat about it. It always comes back to him — even if it's two weeks later, he said.

But he does remember that he used to be "ridiculously good" at memorizing his lines. "I would give anything to be as good at that now as when I was 40 years old," he said.

Pickering traces this string of elders back to the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's production of "Of Mice and Men" in 2016, when he played the decrepit ranch hand Candy. "That was the first time I really felt like a hand in a glove for a geezer," he said. "That was fun."

Let's be clear here: Pickering's not playing a generic old man over and over, but taking pains to distinguish each character. Both Ernie in "The Secret Mask" and Gunner in "The Outgoing Tide" have brain impairments that frustrate their communication with spouses and adult sons, but their problems and trajectories are different. Ernie, with aphasia, is struggling to regain his facility; Gunner, with Alzheimer's, "wants to cut off the future because he knows the future is gonna suck big time," Pickering said.

James Pickering and Tami Workentin share a scene in "The Secret Mask," performed by Next Act Theatre.(Photo: Ross Zentner)

Both roles were challenging to learn because of the characters' impairments. For Ernie, Pickering had to speak nonsensical word salad; as Gunner, his dementia has him seeing and responding to things his fellow characters don't experience.

Both plays, and "Lear," too, aren't just about wounded old men; they're about the wounded relationship of those old men with their adult children.

Actor James Pickering's selfie portrait in character as Gunner, a forceful man with Alzheimer's in "The Outgoing Tide," performed by In Tandem Theatre.(Photo: James Pickering)

Pickering sees both Ernie and Gunner as "really good sketches" before he performs Lear in July for Optimist Theatre's free Shakespeare in the Park at the Marcus Center's outdoor Peck Pavilion. "There are parts of Ernie and parts of Gunner that are (bleeped) up. It's the whole organism with Lear, and it's on an epic scale, epic and domestic at the same time," he said.

While Ernie and Gunner's woes can be partially blamed on physical impairments, Pickering cuts Lear no slack there. He's talked this over with director Lisa Gaye Dixon.

"There's no pre-existing condition for Lear," Pickering said.

"His madness comes from circumstances, comes from events. He sets a thing in motion, that's for sure, and once he does, he doesn't realize now it's out of his control."